How is your local school disrict making up its snow days?

Has your local school district used up all its snow days?

Looks like some schools are canceling the President's Day holiday, and even Memorial Day. Others are canceling Spring Break, or adding on days to the end of the school year.

And, some will seek waivers from state laws mandating a minimum number of school days.

What is your doing?

 

When Fart was a boy- I recall having to go in on a spring Sunday as compensation.
The administrators called it "Graduation Practice."
Very tricky, those Dominican sisters.

 

Don't think any of the local districts have settled on one idea. The main ideas being bantered around are adding days to the end of the school year or adding 30 minutes to each school day.

The state education board has said it prefers adding days because it would be a better quality education than just adding minutes to each day. But the decision is ultimately each districts.

 

This story addresses that:

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/get-schooled/2014/feb/12/should-schools-cancel-spring-break-make-snow-days-/

 

http://www.nj.com/education/2014/02/some_schools_turn_snow_days_into_cyber_days_with_remote_learning.html

Not working from home on snow days will seem as foreign to children in 10-15 years as not having a cell phone or dial up internet.

Every student at my school got a GApps and gmail account last week.

http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/

 

We're not to that point yet, but if our district reaches that point, all holidays will be cancelled and 30 minutes will be added to the end of each day.

 

Times has an article up about potential cyber-days:

But, it's not an option for every school:

nyti.ms/1dpIDjW

 

Most schools build in two or three snow days into the schedule, but those have been used up, so they're tacking the extra days missed onto the end of the year. Graduation has been pushed back to June 5.

 

Kinda funny this thread popped up. Right now I'm teaching only one class, which meets for three hours one night a week (it's a tough gig, I know). So last week the university shut down on that one night. Day before yesterday, some underling in the administration sent everyone an email telling us that the university has set aside two days for faculty members to make up any classes cancelled. Except ...

1) Both of these makeup days are after final exams AND graduation, and neither of those will be rescheduled.

2) Neither makeup day is on the day of the week of my class.

My department chair and I had a chuckle at the shitstorm that would ensue on my telling my students to plan on a makeup day. Ain't gonna happen.

I always build a little flexibility into the syllabus just so that if a class session gets cancelled I still get everything necessary covered.

 

My school district is adding school days at the end of the year, however, graduation will remain on the same date. The last week will be just grades 9-11. I have two freshmen and only about 10-15 sophomores and juniors in all of my classes. We will be watching movies if the yearbook is buttoned up by then, as our YB is a summer release and graduation will be the final spread. On a side note, summer release yearbooks are stupid. I will be changing that next year.

 

A big part of the fun of getting yearbooks is getting your friends to sign them. For a lot of kids, they don't see all their friends all summer, so they end up missing out on getting their books signed.

As far as my school goes, I think they'll just cut short spring break.

 

My senior year of high school (1994) in New Jersey, we had at least one snow day every week from MLK Day to mid-March. It was insane. They cut out about five holidays (two around Easter, a teacher workshop, and President's Day) and we STILL got out a week later than we were originally scheduled to. By the middle of February, once everyone started to realize we were going to be in school until mid-June, even the kids in school were fed up with the days off.

The messed up thing was, it was a year or two after they'd cut the number of snow days built into the calendar from five to one. We'd had a bunch of moderate winters where all those snow days went unused, then it came back to bite them in the ass that time.